CNN to End All Live HLN Programming

CNN will no longer produce live programming on its HLN network in the latest round of intense budget slashing and layoffs. With that decision comes the end of Morning Express with Robin Meade, and the anchor will be leaving the network after two decades on air.

A simulcast of CNN This Morning will take the Morning Express time slot, according to Variety. HLN’s true-crime programming will remain but will now be produced in partnership with Investigation Discovery.

In addition to Meade’s departure, a handful of correspondents and journalists were also laid off from the network in the Thursday, December 1 cuts. CNN correspondents Alison Kosik, Martin Savidge, Alex Field, Mary Ann Fox, and Chris Cillizza are reportedly among those let go.

Additionally, up-and-coming daytime anchor Ana Cabrera will reportedly leave CNN for NBC News, per a separate Variety report, and will likely end up at MSNBC. Cabrera has anchored CNN Newsroom’s 1 p.m. hour since April 2021. Prior to that, she was a CNN weekend anchor for four years after joining the network as a Denver correspondent in 2013.

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HLN was originally titled CNN Headline News. Meade has been reporting from the CNN Center in Atlanta since 2001, making her the longest running anchor of a national morning TV news show.

Morning Express took up most of the network’s daytime programming for years. Its new replacement, CNN This Morning, is the network’s refreshed morning show hosted by Don Lemon, Poppy Harlow, and Kaitlan Collins. It launched in September 2022.

CNN has been undergoing a litany of intense changes to lower costs ever since Chris Licht stepped in as CEO earlier this year. Morning Express joins Reliable Sources as one of the network’s longest-running programs to be canceled after decades on air. The series had been running for 30 years with Brian Stelter coming in to host in 2013.